Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/390

 382 HIGHLAND FORTS IN THE ' FORTY-FIVE '' July Cumberland used to refer to Duncan Forbes as ' the old woman who talked about humanity '. J This story from a prejudiced source has been accepted as fact, and even John Hill Burton enlarged on the theme with a harrowing picture of how Duncan Forbes returned to Culloden ' to find the home of his fathers converted into the shambles of the great butcher of the age '. 2 Such stuff is but hearsay scandal and fustian rhetoric, and is not to be credited against what the two men wrote in confidence about one another at the time. Cumberland, writing to Newcastle on 30 April 1746, reports that the lord president had arrived three days ago : I need not say anything about him, as lie is personally known to the King, and as he has given such convincing proofs of his affections, zeal and diligence and activity upon this occasion. 3 Some of course will question Cumberland's sincerity, but unless they will dub Duncan Forbes a liar and a hypocrite (and he was neither) they cannot so easily dismiss what the lord president wrote to Newcastle of the duke, not on the spur of his first feelings but in the fullness of later knowledge, on 12 July 1746 : I have a very strong sense of His Royal Highness the Duke's indulgence for me ; and what Lightens the Relish of the Pleasure thence resulting is the very great opinion I have of the surprising Qualitys that are possessed by that Young Man. If I was to talk to his Father on this Subject I could not Possibly do it without what would seem Rank Flattery. But as I am writing only to your Grace it will not bear that Imputation when I say : I never saw Talents united in any one which Promise so Compleat a Hero and so sure a stay to the Crown and to the Constitution against foreign forces and Intestine Rebellion. 4 C. L. KlNGSFORD. 1 Lyon in Mourning, iii. 97. 2 Life of Duncan Forbes, p. 381. 3 State Papers, Scotland, ii. 30, no. 30. 4 Ibid. ii. 32, no. 43.